Social engineering with in for kanban

Copyright Lean Kanban Inc.dja@leankanban.com @lki_dja
Training and Consulting
Social
Engineering
With / In / For
Kanban
David J. Anderson
Oredev
Malmo, Sweden

Sociology
is the innovation in Agile development methods
Agile assumes a high trust environment
Elements of high trust include
 Tacit knowledge, collaboration, transparency
 Lack of negotiation, contracts, audit, arbitration &
reconciliation
 Flat, simple org structures
 Broad, loosely defined job titles and roles
 Empowerment, leadership, tolerance of failure

Tribes
Great Boss, Dead Boss -- Ray Immelman
In 2005 this book
changed how I see
the world and how
I understood the
world of work

All warm-blooded vertebrate animals form social
groups for survival and mutual advantage
Flocks… Herds… packs… tribes.
We are inherently social
and cannot get away from it.
The social nature of our species
governs our behavior.

A need to belong
ranks 3rd
in
Mazlov’s hierarchy of needs
after physiological and safety concerns.
We inherently want to belong
to social groups.

The need to belong and conform often
overrides logic or the values and beliefs
of the individual.
Individuals often behave against their
better judgment for fear of
repercussions for their social status…

This leads to group think errors and can result in
riots
ethnic cleansing
war crimes
and generally
acts out of character
for the individual
such as
criminal behavior
vandalism
petty crime
drug taking and substance abuse

Social behavior is governed by our limbic brain
What Daniel Kahneman called
“System 1”
Our amygdala – in evolutionary
terms a very old part of our
brains
Most importantly its function
cannot be switched off or over-
ridden by logical argument

Logical behavior is governed by our frontal cortex
System 2
our logical inference engine
– our frontal cortex
incapable of overcoming
the instinct of the limbic
system
in any cognitive dissonance
or disagreement between
the older and newer
systems in our brain

Immelman’s great insight is that we should
recognized people in the workplace behave
in an inherently tribal manner
Once we recognize this, it is
something we can potentially
harness and control
(or at least manipulate in a
positive manner)

Social group cohesion
Strong/tight
Clear definition of in and out
clear and strict social hierarchy
formalized membership
formalized progress up the social hierarchy
loyalty
strong sense of belonging
drive for conformity
lack of innovation
leadership only from the top
excommunication for transgressing social norms and conventions
intolerance
conservative
lack of risk taking
New members welcomed only if they conform and follow the set path
to membership.

Social group cohesion
Weak/Loose
fuzzy definition of in and out
ambiguous social hierarchy even if one or more leaders are clearly recognized
informal membership
social status determined by peers with no set evaluation criteria
…and no formal path to achieving increased status
lack of loyalty
weaker sense of belonging
tolerance of experimentation
innovation
liberal
risk taking
failure tolerant
leadership from any level
New members readily accepted even with
unconventional ideas, beliefs or behaviors.

Highly cohesive social groups can represent
attractive homes for the lost,
e.g. cults.
Highly cohesive social groups tend to be
brittle and lack resilience and robustness in
the face or environmental change

Story of the Greenland Norse

So if Agile requires a high trust culture,
does a high level of social capital
predict Agile adoption?

LiberalConservative
LowTrustHighTrust
Scandinavia
Coastal
USA
United
Kingdom
India
China
Holland
Belgium
Germany
France
Latin
America
Rest of
USA
Early Agile Adoption
Japan
Early Kanban
Adoption

The key to Agile adoption lies in the social
cohesion of society, not its social capital.
Liberal societies
are more likely to
adopt it.
Early Agile Adoption

Liberal societies exhibit
"anti-fragility"
as they are tolerant of innovation,
and more likely to
adopt, adapt or exapt
a concept from outside
when placed under stress.

Kanban's
start with what you do now approach
made it appealing to a much wider audience.
Conservative, low trust cultures can still use
Kanban by simply
making current policies explicit.
The act of making policies explicit and
providing transparency through visualization
automatically moves the culture up and to
the right

or the inherent
empowerment
provided by
making policies
explicit.
Early Kanban
Adoption
Some Kanban adoptions fail because the
culture is resistant to transparency

A truly Agile society is both
highly trusting and very liberal

Examples of social engineering
WITH
Kanban

- 1 -
WIP limit smaller than team, forcing
collaboration or transparent idleness

- 2 -
Aggregated team servicing multiple customers, forcing
collaboration in various ways:
Level of trust rises with each style of collaboration.
Agreed capacity allocation
Democratic voting
Consensus selection

- 3 -
Use of avatars for multi-skilled workers,
specialists and narrowly skilled on specific
rows

- 4 -
Manage the work,
allow workers to self-organize around it
Manage the work, allow workers to self-organize
around it
Map workflow as states of the work based on
activities to generate new knowledge
no value stream mapping, describing handoffs
between individuals

IN (the design of)
Kanban

Start with what you do now
No one gets a new role or job title
Deliberately chosen to avoid psychological and
sociological effects of identity change

Kanban should be like water!
Avoid the "rocks" of
emotional, psychological and social resistance

Kanban daily meeting is social
System 1 engagement –
visual, social, tactile, narrative

For (the development of)
Kanban (as a social group)

- 1 -
No Kanbanistas
Stamped out before it got much traction
Too strong of an identity leads to dogma

- 2 -
No roles
Again, deliberately weakening the sense of identity

- 3 -
No Kanban-but or Kanban-butts
Weakening the boundary between in and out
Lowering the barrier to entry

- 4 -
Long resistance to certifications. No role-based
certification
Weakens the boundary between in and out
Weakens the sense of identity for the group
Weakens the formalization of the social structure

Actions all taken
to deliberately position
the Kanban community
as a loosely cohesive social group

Not without consequences...
Lack of loyalty
 members of the community tend to come and go
Reduced demand to get involved amongst enthusiast
and early adopter market segments
Lost sheep often don't find a strong enough home in
Kanbanland
Need to replenish the community with new blood
 expensive to keep generating new members and leaders as
others drift off

Developing and maintaining a
loosely cohesive social group
is more expensive
in time, energy and money,
than developing a highly cohesive group.
So Why Do it?...

Advantage #1: Develops New Leaders
Klaus Leopold
Mike Burrows
Karl Scotland
Patrick Steyaert
Alexei Zheglov
Dimitar Bakardzhiev
Rodrigo Yoshima
every winner and nominee of/for the Brickell Key Award…
a long list of new leaders have emerged from Kanbanland
In Scandinavia,
Mattias Skarin, Christoph Achouiantz, Hakan Forss,
Marcus Hammerberg & Joakim Sunden
have all provided leadership in the Kanban community

Advantage #2: Continual Innovation
In 10 years Kanban has evolved, expanded and been
refined.
It takes over an hour on stage to list the innovations and
developments in Kanban since 2005.
The latest significant changes include
Enterprise Services Planning (ESP) and Discovery Kanban
Lean Kanban conferences continue to hold a reputation for
consistently innovative content and participants who are
experimental and push boundaries and tackle new
challenges

Advantage #3: Thoughtfulness
There isn't any dogma in a community trained to think
and develop its ideas from first principles and values.
The key was in defining membership through alignment
with explicitly espoused values and explicitly defined
principles
and showing tolerance of new ideas and practices so long
as they are shown to be aligned with values and
principles.
Examples such as Hakan Forss challenging the depth of
kanban assessment demonstrate a willingness from the
community to eat its own sacred cows

Rejections & Resignations
Where the Kanban community has rejected
individuals and their ideas
– and some of these have been quite public and the
individuals made a terrible fuss about it –
there has been a clearly demonstrable lack of
alignment with Kanban values and principles

Disadvantages #1: People like, want and
need highly cohesive social groups
They need that sense of belonging.
They want a clearly defined social
structure and path to climb it.
So growing the Kanban community
is challenging

Disadvantage #2: Retards the Training Market
Individuals often drive the training market by selecting
training with a personal, emotional, psychological and
social benefit for themselves.
Training related to membership and status within a
highly cohesive social group is therefore more
attractive

Disadvantage #3: Avoiding Dogma is Costly
Dogma – the following of socially normal practices
without thought or hindrance to the utility of
application, ethnics or morals of their use
…is actually easy, lazy behavior.
Thinking uses energy and acting on thoughts may
require courage.
People prefer to join groups and hide behind the
excuse of social conformity

Conclusions

We are inherently social!
Our tendency to let social behavior override
our better judgment
or ability to think logically
is a human trait
that managers must accept and adapt for

Copyright Lean Kanban Inc. dja@leankanban.com @lki_dja
Enterprise Services Planning
6 Planning Activities
ESP activities
 schedule and sequence work
 forecast delivery dates and expected outcomes
 allocate capacity
 manage dependencies
 understand and manage risk
 ensure sufficient liquidity to react to unfolding events
ESP is about balancing demand with capacity to deliver,
keeping in mind the dependencies and risks

Social Engineering with/in/for Kanban
Kanban has broad applicability
to social groups with different traits and behaviors

Kanban can be used as a social engineering tool
within an organization

An understanding that we as a species
are inherently social has been used explicitly
to define the Kanban Method
– a “humane approach to change”

The same understanding was used strategically for
almost a decade
to lead, shape and steer the development
of the Kanban community as a
loosely cohesive social group
accepting both the benefits and consequences of that
decision

Thank you!

About
David Anderson is an innovator in
management of 21st Century
businesses that employ creative
people who “think for a living” . He
leads a training, consulting,
publishing and event planning
business dedicated to developing,
promoting and implementing new
management thinking & methods…
He has 30+ years experience in the high technology industry
starting with computer games in the early 1980’s. He has
led software organizations delivering superior productivity
and quality using innovative methods at large companies such
as Sprint and Motorola.
David defined Enterprise Services Planning and originated
Kanban Method an adaptive approach to improved service
delivery. His latest book, published in June 2012, is, Lessons
in Agile Management – On the Road to Kanban.
David is Chairman & CEO of Lean Kanban Inc., a business
operating globally, dedicated to providing quality training &
events to bring Kanban and Enterprise Services Planning to
businesses who employ those who must “think for a living.”

Social engineering with in for kanban

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